News of the Flutie Bowl

Last night, Martha and I went to Boston for the fifth annual Flutie Bowl for Autism. I can recommend this event very highly to any of you sports fans with a connection to autism. Actually, you didn’t really need a connection to autism. You just needed $150 and Doug Flutie would make the connection to autism for you.

I met Doug, and he’s a very nice guy with a real mission.

Before going to the Bowl, we went to dinner at the Legal Seafoods in the Prudential Center. It’s one of my favorite places to eat in Boston. I was joined by Tom Murphy, a prominent attorney and one of the board members of Elms College (I work with their autism program,) our event person Jan, and her friend Bob, who works for the Sisters of St. Joseph in Boston.

Tom deserves special mention, because is a real gentlemen. He’s the exact opposite of a manner-less Aspergian like me. He even held the chair for Martha. He’s very polished, and was quite impressive to watch. There are times I wish I had 10% of those skills. He is a bit older than me, though, and it’s possible I will have 10% of his skills when I am his age. Luckily, he sees redeeming value in me thanks to my book. Otherwise, I would have been dismissed as an ill-mannered boor and booted out the side exit.

I ate an order of shrimp wontons before the others arrived. Martha insisted I eat the seaweed, too, which I did.

After dinner, it was off to the bowl. The event was held at Lucky Strike Lanes by Fenway Park. It’s an upscale bowling alley, the kind of place Western Mass hicks like us just gaze at in wonderment. I was glad we arrived by car, and not by mule. The event was sold out with almost 500 people

I learned a few things . . .

I was very uncomfortable when I arrived, because the place was full of people milling around and making noise, and it was all seemingly random. The place was packed with glittering people, sports figures, and people with cameras. It was kind of a sensory overload thing.

I cast my eye about for something to thing of as a distraction.

It sure looked like there was an over-abundance of females at the event. I pondered how I might determine if that was actually true, or if they simply stood out as a result of their attire. So here’s what I did: I looked out at the room, and began counting every head I saw from left to right. I kept two counts. One I incremented for each person. The other I incremented by one for each girl, and decreased by one for each guy. I counted a total of 100 people as a sample. At the end, my up/down counter stood at 14, meaning the female/male ratio was 36:64. There were almost two girls for every guy. Of course, I only looked out over the bar area. It’s possible other areas, like the bowling lanes, were biased in favor of males, but it didn’t look that way.

Clearly, if one was looking for a female, Lucky Strike Lanes was a good place to be. However, I was just an observer, having brought my own female to the event. Since there were two of us, one male and one female, we did not shift the balance either way.

There were many sports figures in attendance. I would have thought the football players would have stood out by their size, but many were no larger than me. I was surprised at that. There were Patriots, Red Sox, and Celtics in evidence, according to comments I overheard. I felt a bit foolish, not knowing anything about professional sports, and being unable to appreciate all that.

The Elms College sent a contingent of people and they actually sponsored a lane, which meant that they engaged in the bowling competition. I found myself drawn in, and to my surprise, they said I had a knack for throwing a large heavy plastic ball. If you knock down all the pins with one ball, they refer to that as a strike. I did that three times in six or seven turns, and someone said “three strikes and you’re out,” so I retreated to the main floor.

I try and watch what goes on in social settings like this, to better figure out how to act. One thing I’d always heard was, “Let the important people win.” Well, we had the President of The Elms there, and no one gave him any special treatment at all. In the lane to my right, there were some real Patriots, and some aspiring football players. And the aspiring players whupped the Patriots. Of course, they woke up this morning and the Patriots are still Patriots and the others aren’t and maybe that’s why.

I later discovered the comment about the strikes was untrue, and returned to the floor, where I got one more strike and then proceeded to largely miss several rolls, after which I wandered off again. I became much more comfortable when Doug’s band started playing. I could follow the music, and even though it got louder, I actually felt a lot better with something to follow.

Everything was donated for this event, including the bar. As best I could tell, the drinks were free. And yet, I did not see a single fight break out. There was a fellow with whipped cream cake in his face, but he was not violent at all. Perhaps there’s a lesson there for other saloon keepers. . . when things get edgy, give them free drinks, and they calm down.

Speaking of the bar . . . they had the most remarkable array of flat screen televisions arrayed for fifty feet down the bar. Betting professionals would love a place like that, because they can show all the games, all the time. I saw some money on the bar last night, but I believe it was tips, not wagers.

It’s amazing how small the world can seem at times. As I was tossing balls, the fellows in the next lane introduced themselves. One played for the Patriots, and the other turned out to be the son of my neighbor here at work in Springfield. Who’d have thought I’d see the neighbor’s kid in a bowling alley, 90 miles from home? And he lived out there.

They also had an auction, where sweat stained articles of clothing fetched thousands of dollars from frenzied bidders. That was a remarkable sight to see. I wondered if the prices went higher because the actual sports figures were there to establish a provenance. Could two entrepreneurial kids in a garage in the Ukraine make a career selling signed sports jerseys? It sure looked like they could.

When we left near 11, things were still going strong. As we passed westbound on the Turnpike, the lights still glittered.